The Malik Report

Updated 7x at 10:56 PM: The Red Wings' 5-1 loss to the Pittsbugh Penguins was, to some extent, a case of personnel--the Penguins iced an NHL roster and the Wings were playing minus Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Kronwall, Ericsson, Alfredsson, Kindl, Howard, etc.--and, to some extent, a case of a very green lineup proving what Johan Franzen told Ken Daniels, Mickey Redmond and Chris Osgood during the second intermission: when you don't touch the puck, you're not going to play very well.

The Wings have played in 3 home exhibition games in front of half-full crowds, on average, and they've played decidedly below-average in front of people paying regular-season prices to watch three very poor efforts against Boston, Chicago and now Pittsburgh.

Don't get me wrong, the Wings' youngsters, like Xavier Ouellet, Adam Almquist, and Petr Mrazek, who had an "off night," are "learning," and the veterans--and especially newcomers like Stephen Weiss are acclimating to very unfamiliar surroundings (he's going to have a rough first 10 games)--but losing sucks regardless of whether your "C Team" is playing the opponent's "A Team," and the Wings' performance was poor on individual as well as team-wide bases.

The Red Wings have a pair of games against Toronto on Friday and Saturday, and perhaps knowing that the big boys would play and that HBO's cameras and the Toronto Media Mob are coming to town, the Wings mentally checked out before the game...

But it's still disappointing and still frustrating to see the youngsters play so indecisively, to see Danny DeKeyser, Brendan Smith, Tomas Tatar, Brian Lashoff et. al. remind us that they are still rookies (in the literal and figurative senses), and to see Johan Franzen, Daniel Cleary, Mikael Samuelsson, Kyle Quincey and even Gustav Nyquist, Joakim Andersson and Petr Mrazek look just as unfamiliar with the "way the Red Wings play" as the "youfs" were.

The Wings didn't wilt under pressure as mcuch as they committed unforced errors--from the goaltender on out--and while I'm no coach, I sure as hell would'a simply told the Wings' players to take Thursday off, enjoy the warm weather and golf, flush this game out...And to show up on Friday and to prepare for the final pair of games as if they actually count, because the pair of dress rehearsals really do matter.

Thus far, the Wings haven't shown their paying fans a thing, and that's just unsettling, more because of the lack of intensity, attention to detail, focus, "compete level" and overall effort than the results.

I'll post goals in a minit and some stats, but sometimes the "feel" of the game matters more than the game's narrative.

Goals and stuff: Jussi Jokinen blew in on a breakaway with 4:56 left in the 1st, scoring a PPG thanks to Brian Lashoff and Danny DeKeyser rotating to the left and Stephen Weiss not sorting out coverage with Lashoff...

This was just poor. DeKeyser got accidentally kicked by Crosby, Weiss didn't do a good job of covering the lane and Brendan Smith was in la-la land when Crosby sent the pass to Chris Kunitz with 2:25 left in the 1st...

3:14 into the 2nd period, Craig Adams did tip a shot from Malkin at the blueline, but the Wings both let the passing lanes go and Mrazek was coming off his goal line--and was off his angle--as Adams tipped Malkin's shot in:

Drew Miller proved that Marc-Andre Fleury is no Dominik Hasek by salvaging some pride with 7:11 left in the 2nd...

But this goal by Kunitz, scored with 2:34 left, and resulting from a bad tip by Ouellet to nobody--because whoever was supposed to be on the ice decided that the puck being in the neutral zone = time to change! yielded a breakaway, and Mrazke should have had this one...

And for better or worse, the Penguins kept putting Crosby, Malkin, Kunitz et. al. over the boards in the 3rd, and Kuntiz scored this goal with 10:32 left in the game:

Aside from Mikael Samuelsson trying to jab at Malkin at the end of the game, and Justin Abdelkader getting into a wrestling match with gloves off against Robert Bortuzzo, the Wings didn't show much "fight."

Johan Franzen summed it up during a second-period interview on Fox Sports Detroit by saying, “It kind of looks like boys against men out there.''

Detroit's top line featured Stephen Weiss centering Franzen and Justin Abdelkader, as Daniel Alfredsson continues to be idled by a sore groin.

Asked on FSD about the adjustment it will take playing with Weiss, Franzen said, “I don't know yet. We haven't had the puck yet this game, so we'll see.''

The Red Wings are 2-4 in the preseason, 0-3 at home. The Penguins, who got a pair of goals from Chris Kunitz, finished the preseason at 3-2-1.

Red Wings coach Mike Babcock wanted to see what some of young players can do as the exhibition schedule is winding down (they finish with a home-and-home set against Toronto Friday at the Joe and Saturday at the Air Canada Centre). He couldn't have been too impressed.

Goaltender Petr Mrazek allowed five goals on 37 shots. He didn't look sharp on a couple of the goals, but he also didn't have much help from his teammates. Mrazek will start the season as Detroit's backup due to Jonas Gustavsson's groin injury.

When you looked at the two rosters there was a chance of this being a mismatch and it’s exactly what it turned out to be. Using basically their opening night roster the Pittsburgh Penguins Wednesday defeated the Red Wings 5-1.

Battling injuries, with two more exhibition games to go this weekend, and using some players destined for Grand Rapids, the Red Wings were outshot 36-17 and fell to 2-4-0 for the exhibition season.

“Today we didn’t have the puck,” coach Mike Babcock said. “They made us look bad. We made some mistakes. They had it, we chased it the whole game. We were never on the offense. They were better than us. They executed and came out of their zone fast. We didn’t execute at all.”

One underlying benefit of the Penguins’ onslaught is that young Red Wings goaltender Petr Mrazek saw a lot of action against one of the league’s top squads.

“He got lots of opportunities to makes saves, that’s for sure,” Babcock said. “We broke down enough to give him lots of opportunities. It’s like anything – you don’t like to give up goals as a goaltender, but we gave up point-blank chances and I thought he made some good saves.”

Mrazek said he knew coming in that he would be facing some of the league’s top gunners and is now looking to learn from this experience.

“It wasn’t an easy night,” Mrazek said. “That was my first game I played the whole game. I felt good before the game and during the game, but it was a tough night for us… We have to look at the goals and see what happened, be quicker and out of the (crease), so that’s the most important stuff.”

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“I thought we had a couple breakdowns tonight and gave them a couple easy ones,” Red Wings forward Stephen Weiss said. “Against a team like that, it’s tough to come back.”

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“We had a tough time getting out of our zone clean tonight and getting through the neutral zone clean and when you’re having a tough time with that, you’re turning pucks over and they’re coming back at you,” Weiss said. “It’s tough to generate offense a lot of times. By the time you get in their zone, you’re changing and you can’t sustain anything.”

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.